There is nothing more trying in this world than poverty. An Osaka woman and her daughter are living together but have no income and not even a little smoke rises from their home. On the night of December 27, sick in bed and being cared for by her daughter, the mother, bearing her miserable pain, leaves home, throws herself from Sankyubashi, and dies. Her daughter, susprised to find her sick mother gone, goes looking for her, and hearing of her fate, she flies into the water from the same bridge, but falls onto a small boat and is cared for by the boatmaster, a man named Gonbei, who urges her to live.